It's All About Security With EMC

EMC (NYSE: EMC) is integrating its PowerPath management software with technology from its RSA security division, and has built a new joint platform that ties together its Voyence Control tool with its RSA enVision product for security information and event management.

The two announcements, made at the RSA conference taking place in San Francisco this week, illustrate that the storage titan, known for high-end enterprise systems, is moving more than a few steps away from its legacy storage sector and pushing into providing infrastructure security technologies.

The PowerPath Encryption with RSA, available come May, pulls in encryption and central security management for Symmetrix and CLARiiON storage systems. It uses RSA Key Manager for the Datacenter that helps users manage encryption keys at the database, file server and storage layers.

EMC said the enhanced tool, which boosts application availability, performance and management between servers, switches, and storage, will help companies comply with increasing regulatory mandates such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, as well as protecting critical information -- both big concerns given the data loads enterprises are handling these days.

"Information is the heart of a business. People are a core asset, but data can't be replaced. Today's companies are concerned about keeping their company off the front page of newspapers," Doc D'Errico, EMC's VP and GM of its infrastructure software group, told InternetNews.com.

The product announcements come two years after EMC acquired RSA for $2.1 billion. Since then, EMC has been stitching core RSA security software into its top-of-the-line Symmetrix DMX-3 storage array.

Just six months ago EMC acquired Voyence, a provider of network configuration and change management solutions that automate change, compliance and activation processes.

EMC has now meshed the network ops tool into its enVision appliance in order to allow enterprises to define automated security policies as well as investigate security events.

According to EMC, automation means fewer service outages, better management of network asset configuration changes and a proactive way to evaluate security issues tied to potential network configuration changes.

"This is all about information management and bringing these two worlds together, security and network operations, and it has a significant value proposition," Peter Cruz, senior director of product management and strategy, told InternetNews.com.

"It allows for better communication between the security team and the network ops team as policies relating to network security can conflict. It's critical to enable secure collaboration and let the two teams work together to address shared challenges."